The club was founded in 2008 by a group of 3 friends who were keen experienced gardeners who recognized there was a need for people with similar interests to share their knowledge in gardening. As membership has grown the Club has organized garden tours and invited speakers on relevant subjects.
The club normally meets on the second Tuesday of each month throughout the year at 11am.
New members are always welcome.

Quote of the Month

There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.

~Mirabel Osler

Thursday, 16 October 2014

October meeting - 14 October

TUESDAY, 14th OCTOBER, 2014in the SALON de ACTOS at 11amAyuntamiento de Còmpeta. La Rampa, CómpetaCindy Jones opened the meeting welcoming Maggie Wood as speaker and the 31 members in attendance.She advised that she had written to Mariano, on behalf of the club, following our visit to his wonderful cactus garden (Casarabonela Cacti Succulent Botanical Gardens 9 September), thanking them for a wonderful day and saying how much we had enjoyed it. Mariano responded saying they had "such fun with us" as "we were a great group"

Cindy reported that she had received an email from our Bug man, Tim Churchill, who members will recall gave a talk at the July meeting. Tim advised that he proposed to his fiancée in Gordon Ramsey's restaurant. The staff were in on his proposal and brought the ring out on a silver platter under a cloche!! Luckily, she said "Yes!!"

Cindy also reminded all members that their membership is due at next months meeting, November. This must be the bargain of the year, still only 10 euros.

Guest Speaker

Maggie Wood

Marching through May - The beauty of a spring camino

Maggie was captivated by the abundance of wayside flowers on her 670km hike through Portugal following a Pilgrim's route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain with a brief report followed by a slide show set to music that she had prepared.

During the first three minutes of the You Tube presentation Maggie has recorded the introduction that she

gave at the meeting and the rest is just the photos with musical background.

A few people asked about the music which was a mixture of the following two artists:

Antonio Forcione - album Touch Wood

The Daily Planet - album The Big Scoop

Here is the introduction Maggie gave before showing the slides:

" I have prepared a slideshow with a few of the hundreds of photos I took during May this year when I walked north through Portugal and across the border into Spain.

There are many pilgrimage routes that converge in Santiago de Compostela in North West Spain. Known as the Camino de Santiago, these routes have been walked since Medieval times when pilgrims believed they would receive absolution by walking to the shrine where the bones of St James are kept.

The routes have seen a resurgence recently and each year as many as 220,000 pilgrims from around the world claim their completion certificate, known as a Compostela, which is awarded on production of the pilgrim's credential - a document that is stamped at every stop-over along the way. A minimum of 100 km has to be walked in order to qualify for a Compostela.

Last year I walked the Camino Frances with my daughter Ella. This is the most walked route and we started on the French side of the Pyrenees and walked 950 km westward to Santiago, and on to the coast at Finisterre.

I had taken up walking specifically to join Ella on this adventure, having never hiked before. I trained a great deal and was fairly fit by the time we set off, but it is impossible to train to walk every day - unless you are actually walking every day. It was hard, but we made it without any major incidents.

On returning home I remained fascinated by the camino and soon started planning a walk for this year along the Camino Portuguese. My new challenge would be to walk alone, although as it happened I met a woman on one of the camino forums who was planning to walk from the same place at the same time, so we arranged to meet in Lisbon.

Elly is an Australian Architect in her mid forties and a very different personality to me. We had no idea how we would get on but we decided to start walking together and go our separate ways when the time seemed right. First though we spent a day and a half getting to know eachother and exploring the fabulous city of Lisbon, with our own personal guide in the guise of another forum member who lived and worked in the city.

This was Elly's fourth camino and she was very organised. I was happy to leave the decisions to her and she kept the pace fairly easy with shorter days than I would probably have walked had I been on my own. We walked at different paces, so although we started the day together and would meet up regularly along the way, quite often we would be walking our own walk.

In the event we stuck together until we reached Porto on day 19, when Elly decided to take a day off and I decided to get on with my solo walk and head off alone. It had been great to walk together, particularly on the little trodden route from Lisbon to Porto, but I also really enjoyed walking alone.

The first section until Porto had been mostly very hot - something of a heatwave in fact, but the rain started as we arrived in Porto and it didnt really stop for long until I reached Santiago. But it's a lot easier to walk in the cooler weather and I put in a series of quite long days, reaching Santiago on day 27.

As last year, I carried my worldly goods on my back and stayed in dormitory style accommodation where it was available.

Now that I have experienced walking alone, I will be more confident in taking on my next solo project

I have put together this slideshow especially for the garden club, which for the most part shows the wild flowers that I encountered along the way, with a few cultivated blooms that I couldn't resist, and some sights of interest thrown in for good measure

The slideshow lasts for about 30 minutes and I will let the images speak for themselves."

The audience watched with rapt attention as Maggie shared a slide show of some of the beautiful flowers, buildings and scenery along the route. There was even a photo of ostriches! Maggie was experimenting with the macro setting on her camera and she had captured some vivid and beautiful close up shots of wild life.

Maggie kept the audience fascinated with her tales of the hostel accommodation along the way, and all were amazed at her ability to take so many lovely photos while on the move, and her tenacity to keep on walking day after day.

Here are the statistics that Maggie quoted at the end of the presentation:

Camino de Santiago facts and figures for 2013

Compostellas (completion certificates) issued 215,880

Gender55% male 45% female

Mode of transport

- foot 87%

- bicycle 12%

- horseback 0.5%

- wheelchair 0.3%

Pilgrim country of origin

- Spain 50% (I think the majority of spanish walk the minimum amount in order to receive a Compostela, ie 100km)

- Germany 7.5%

- Italy 7%

- Portugal 5%

- USA 5%

- Irish 2.5%

- UK 2%

- Canada 1.5%

- Australia 1.5%

In total pilgrims from 139 different countries claimed a Compostela in 2013

Age

Under 30 - 28%

30-60 - 56%

Over 60 - 15%

Pilgrimage routes

Frances - 70%

Portuguese - 14%

Norte - 6%

Via de la Plata - 4%

Primitivo - 3%

Ingles - 2%

Muxia - Finnisterre - 0,2%

Other - 0.2%

For the second year running Maggie also raised funds from her pilgrimage for Action for Animals and Cudeca through sponsorship.

Following a lively question and answer session, Carol Starr gave a vote of thanks to Maggie on behalf of the members and the winning raffle ticket was drawn. Ron Lott won this month's raffle.

If you would like some background information on Maggie's trek along the Camino Portuguese from Lisbon to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain, take a look at her wonderful blog http://www.magwood.me